City of Derry braced for two home games in four days

City of Derry vs. Enniskillen

Judges Road

Today, 2:30pm

City of Derry head into their toughest week of the season as they are scheduled to play two games in the space of just four days at Judges Road.

Richard McCarter’s side may have only three league games left, but the Kukri League schedule demands that all fixtures are played by a certain date, which has now put the squeeze on teams like Derry, who face Enniskillen today before hosting relegation-threatened Grosvenor on Tuesday night.

McCarter has seen it all in his time in the game however, and while it is certainly not ideal, it could be much worse, with the fact that both games are at Judges Road some consolation at least.

“It's going to be a tight turnaround and we’re expecting a really tough game on Saturday,” he admitted. “Their league form might not be the best, and it would be similar to ours, but they’ve done really well in the All-Ireland Junior Cup which they lost on Saturday night to Clogher Valley at Ravenhill.

"We’re expecting a tough game physically on Saturday, and then it’s a turnaround a few days later to play against Grosvenor, who are fighting for their lives at the bottom of the table. It is two contrasting teams but it will be fairly demanding on the players. We have nothing then the following week so we just have to soak it up really and our best over those two games.”

McCarter’s hope that his team could win their last four league games ended abruptly last Saturday when they lost 21-28 to Dromore. Tries from Simon Logue, Davy Graham and Ian Bratton were not enough as Dromore ended Derry hopes of closing the gap between the teams.

“We’ve had defeats this year when we’ve come away and we were just really poor, like the Dromore defeat at home and the Carrick defeat just before Christmas, but this one didn’t fall into that bracket,” he reflected.

“It was just frustrating because we actually played pretty well at times. We made a lot of mistakes, especially in the opposition’s ’22. I actually counted and we got into their ’22 12 times during the game and we made mistakes on six of those occasions so if you’re messing up 50% of the time it’s going to be a frustrating one.

“We did play well at times and we defended well at times, but we just made too many mistakes to win that sort of a game.”

Fifth place

McCarter now accepts that the bets his team can achieve is fifth place.

“I know I probably put a wee bit of pressure on the lads when I said I wanted to win the last four, but we wanted to set our standards high and set our goals high,” he continued. “The highest we could achieve was fourth so we knew we had to win all four games, especially because Dromore only have two games left now and without being disrespectful to Limavady, that’s one of them so you would expect them to get five points there. Realistically we had to win the last four, but that is now out of reach so we have to just try and win the last three now and try and get fifth spot.”

So, it’s onto this weekend and a hope that his team can come through the Enniskillen game unscathed.

“There are teams who are worse off than us,” he added. “I think Enniskillen have to play five games in the next two weeks so we just have to get on with it. The fact that we’re at home makes it easier rather than travelling to Belfast in midweek, so it is what it is and we’ll just get on with it.”